Rossella Rago - Cooking with Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays: 130 Classic Holiday Recipes from Italian Grandmothers

COOKING WITH

A YEAR OF ITALIAN HOLIDAYS

130 CLASSIC HOLIDAY RECIPES FROM ITALIAN GRANDMOTHERS

ROSSELLA RAGO

Foreword by Adriana Trigiani

FOREWORD

Hallelujah and pass the gravy!

Rossella Rago is back in the kitchen with Nonna Romana and an all-star team of Italian-American grandmothers with roots and recipes from every region in Italy. The dynamic duo has written the most spectacular holiday cookbook since the first loaf of Saint Roccos bread was baked in his honor outside of Naples. Yes, we celebrate his feast day, and, yes, the recipe is in this cookbook!

Tradition, folklore, and love are blended, sifted, and baked into these timeless recipes with skill. Rossella describes how to find and use the freshest herbs, spices, and essential ingredients to create your la bella tavola. You will revel in the storytelling and find the inspiration to reach back in time and make your favorite dishes, Nonnas way.

Whether youre Italian-American, married to one, or a foodie who simply craves the occasional dish of macaroni, this cookbook is a must for your familys kitchen. As I read Rossellas beautiful stories, interviews, and recipes, I savored memories of holidays past, and looked forward to the year ahead with plans to make the profiteroles, zeppole, and risotto, la Nonnefor starters. You cant go wrong. Rossella and the Nonne guide you through the preparation of each dish with clear instructions. You will even develop new techniques to apply to your old recipes, invigorating your familys favorite dishes.

E vero, Rossella and the Nonne have done it again, but this time, they did it wearing party hats with their aprons. And you will too! Cooking With Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays gives us 130 reasons to celebrate from New Years Day to Christmas, as we prepare these fabulous dishes for those we love. And if gorgeous Rossella and her bella Nonne have anything to say about it, it will be a year you will never forget.

Adriana Trigiani
New York City
Autumn 2018

INTRODUCTION

Why does everyone always come over to our house? I asked my Nonna Romana as I painstakingly ironed her embroidered napkins with perfect creases for the celebration the next day. Because, Rossella, we keep the family together. She said in her Italian Nonna voice, which served to remind me that she does, in fact, know everything.

Her words made me think of how in every Italian family there is always that one house that hosts more holidays than everyone else. No matter what distances or circumstances separate people throughout the year, all it takes is one phone call from Nonna to bring everyone back to that holiday table where memories are made.

My most cherished holiday memory is surprisingly not one from my childhood, but a very recent Christmas Day. Two years ago, my parentsVito and Angelawere hosting Christmas at their home in New Jersey so that we could better accommodate our large family. My father had about two hundred raw clams and a plethora of seafood chilling in the garage (the second refrigerator for many Italians), and my mother had perfectly arranged tables covered in Christmas tablecloths with matching napkins and holiday plates. For the past two decades, this has been the traditional setting for our holiday meals, but it never quite felt right.

You see, when I was eight years old, my parents moved us (my brother, Leo, and me) to the northern New Jersey suburbs, and while there was much more space than we were used to in our home on the corner of West 6th Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the holidays never felt the same. Before we moved, the holidays were always held in Nonna Romanas basement apartment, just downstairs from where my family lived. As far back as I can remember, I would help Nonna move furniture and arrange card tables in a zigzag pattern that would stretch all the way from the dining area to the front door. The kid table was always separate from the adult table, and we were usually stuck by the front door, or Siberia as I liked to call it. Whichever cousin wasnt lucky enough to get a folding chair was made to sit on Nonnas old La-Z-Boy, while the rest of us giggled at the unlucky soul who had to fumble with their broccoli rabe in the wayward recliner.

We would cover the tables with a bunch of Nonnas holiday tablecloths, none that matched, but each with its own story. This one belonged to Nonna Regina! She bought it from Martins department store in downtown Brooklyn the first year she was in America! Or, This one, Zia Commara brought back for me from her honeymoon, she would tell me as I traced the delicately embroidered holly on the matching napkins. I gathered the mismatched cutlery and the glasses, which ranged from Nonnas stemmed wine glasses for the adults to repurposed jelly jars with pictures of cartoon characters on them for the kids.

Then, of course, there was the food. Out of Nonna Romanas tiny corner kitchen would emerge enough dishes to rival the cocktail hour at Russos on the Bay in Queens! Baked clams, focaccia, mussels marinara, calamari, and a dozen different kinds of cookies oh my! Sure, my aunts and relatives would bring over a few dishes to round out the meal, but for a basement kitchen with very limited resources, it was an astonishing selection. As family began to arrive, the air in the basement would become thick and warm from the oven. The small windows barely provided any ventilation, and the circulating hot air would only intensify when my Uncle Vito started discussing politics.

We eat, we drink, and we reminisce, but most importantly, we love!

We would eventually all sit down to a sea of antipasti, which would usually leave us way too full to eat anything else, though not for lack of trying! The pasta course was superfluous, but it always made an appearance, because skipping it would be downright sacrilegious. Mesmerized by the colors and flavors spread across the table, we would all eat until the tablecloths were stained with wine and Coca-Cola, and sprinkled with a delicate layer of focaccia crumbs. After the meal, we would stay up late playing tombola (Italian bingo) and card games, to be interrupted occasionally by a symphony of swear words in our Italian dialect whenever one of my uncles would loseyes, even if it was a holiday. These are some of my most precious memories. Few of them are perfect, but they are all real.

But back to New Jersey. It was just a few years ago on Christmas Day: The stage had been set at my parents home for the grandiose holiday affair, but at around nine oclock in the morning, while I was still opening Christmas presents in Brooklyn, I received a frantic phone call from my mother. Strong winds had brought down a power line, knocking out all the power on my parents street. Ross! What are we going to do? Everybodys coming! We have all the fish! my mother wailed in despair over the phone. I could hear my father in the background, fighting a losing battle with a generator. This was not good. After a few hours, Papa Vito managed to restore power to the heating system with the generator, but without electricity, hosting and cooking for twenty people was just not going to happen. Were coming to Nonnas, my mother said to me in a much calmer phone call. The decision was made, and for the first time in over a decade, we would spend Christmas Day in the place where we first became a family: Nonna Romanas Brooklyn basement. None of the silverware matched that day, and there may have been an old red wine stain or two on the tablecloth, but we still feasted on seafood cavatelli and played